tab ei NEARGEMENT 
OF THE NATIVE ARM 
Obey aiuto RV Cre 
Boot ighaine Oe Tih 
BUCh oto CESS 
Ores Visits o.l.OIN-S 


John F. Goucher 


Number. 


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OsHeNGuRe. MONT 2 


THE ENLARGEMENT OF THE 
NATIVE ARM OF THE SERVICE 
ESSENTIAL TO THE HIGHEST 
Se GB Sv bee M TS ST ONS 


BY 


JOHN R. MOTT 


Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Student 
Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions 
and General Secretary of the World's 
Student Christian Federation 


BOSTON 


THE AMERICAN BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS 
FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS 


1902 


An Andress 


GIVEN AT THE NINETY-THIRD ANNUAL MEET- 
ING OF THE BOARD, HELD AT OBERLIN, 
OHIO, OCTOBER SIXTEENTH, 
NINETEEN HUNDRED 
AND Two 


John F. Goucher 


THE ENLARGEMENT OF THE 
NATIVE ARM OF THE SERVICE 
ESSENTIAL TO THE HIGHEST 
SUGGES SOF MIS SiLONS 


Rav ee te tr aye Os HEN eRe  MIOrle © 
w 


A STUPENDOUS PROBLEM 


THERE is need of strengthening greatly the 
native arm of the service throughout the mis- 
sion fields of the world. The idea of evangel- 
izing the world in this generation, apart from 
the raising up of a vast army of native workers, 
is at the best a vision which is not likely to 
be realized. We shall need during this gener- 
ation several thousands of the choicest spirits 
which the colleges and the theological semi- 
naries of North America, the British Isles, and 
other Protestant lands can furnish, to evangel- 
ize the heathen nations, to plant the Church, 
to guide and steady the Church, and to place 
at the disposal of native Christian agencies 
the acquired experience of Christendom. 
But for every thousand missionaries there will 
be needed not less than ten thousand native 
workers to serve as pastors, teachers, evangel- 
ists, catechists, and Bible women. This pre- 
sents a stupendous problem, because if we 

3 


are to flood the world with the knowledge and 
spirit of Jesus Christ and do the fair thing by 
our particular generation, we must have noth- 
ing less than an army of native workers. 


NATURAL ADVANTAGE OF THE NATIVE WORKER 


The value and importance of raising up an 
adequate native force would seem to be evi- 
dent. Asa matter of economy and business 
sense it is desirable, because native agents can 
live and work in their own country at compar- 
atively little expense. Moreover, the natives 
are already acclimatized, and can work at all 
seasons and without furloughs. They are in 
intimate association with their own people ; 
they travel together, eat together, lodge to- 
gether, live together. The foreigner, at the 
best, has exotic habits. Naturally, they have 
a more fluent command of the vocabulary and 
idioms of the language. They have an inti- 
mate acquaintance with the habitual trains of 
thought, the currents of feeling, and the 
springs of action. They understand the na- 
tive character, and, other things being equal, 
are the best judges of the motives and sincer- 
ity of those among whom they work. They 
know the temptations, doubts, and soul-strug- 
gles of those with whom they are so closely 
associated. They have probably fought over 
the same battle ground. They know the heart 
life of their fellows, and their fellows know 
that they know it. They are of the same 


4 


blood. They will always have larger and 
more influential access to their own people. 
It took a German to lead the German Refor- 
mation. Wyclif did so in England. John 
Knox did-so in Scotland. Americans have 
always most deeply moved this continent. 
And so it will ever be, — the sons and daugh- 
ters of the soil will leave the deepest mark on 
their own people and generation. 


THE NATIVE WORKER THE PRINCIPAL FACTOR 


History teaches that the principal factor 
in the evangelization of non-Christian nations 
has been the native factor. There has never 
been an extensive region or nation thoroughly 
evangelized but by its own sons. It would 
seem to be the Providential method. It is 
also the method which great missionaries have 
specially emphasized. Alexander Duff, that 
great missionary statesman, —I class him a- 
mong the great statesmen of the British Em- 
pire,—said that ‘when the set time arrives 
the real reformers of Hindustan will be quali- 
fied Hindus.” Joseph Neesima, after years 
of Christian work in Japan, said that “the 
best possible method to evangelize her people 
is to raise up a native agency.” Mackay, of 
Uganda, a wiser missionary than his years gave 
promise of while he lived, but whose wisdom 
becomes more and more apparent as the mis- 
sionary problem is grappled with in Africa, 
said that “the agency by which, and proba- 

5 


bly by which alone, we can Christianize Africa 
is the African himself. But,’’ he added, ‘‘ he 
must first be trained for that work, and 
trained, too, by the European in Africa.” Dr. 
Nevius, who was conceded to be one of the 
ablest missionaries in China, said that “the 
millions of China must be brought to Christ 
by Chinamen.” Dr. Griffith John, the great 
Nestor of Chinese missionaries, wrote me 
some two years ago from the heart of China 
that the wonderful ingathering of the past few 
years in Fukien, Hupeh, Hunan, and Man- 
churia is attributable mainly, under God, to 
the efficiency, the earnestness, and the assi- 
duity of the native workers. Dr. Goodrich 
wrote me about the same time, from North 
China, that whether we view this question po- 
litically, economically, historically, or sociolog- 
ically, the only sound method of evangelizing 
a great nation is that of raising up and using 
the native agency. 


DIFFICULTIES IN SECURING AN ADEQUATE 
NATIVE FORCE 


There are difficulties in the way of securing 
and using native workers. It may be well to 
call attention to them. There is, for exam- 
ple, the confemptin which religious workers 
are held in the East. This is unlike what 
we find in America and Great Britain, where 
the ministry has dignity and prestige as a re- 
sult of its honorable position and influence 

6 


through centuries. All through Asia to-day, 
largely as a result of the corrupt lives of the 
Buddhist and other priests, religious callings 
are looked down upon, if not despised. Un- 
willingness to incur the reproach which so 
often attaches to the native who is related to 
the foreigner, is another difficulty which keeps 
many from entering upon Christian service 
in these countries. They do not like to be 
called foreign hirelings, as a Japanese ex- 
pressed it to me; or, as a group of Chinese 
put it, they do not want to be twitted with eat- 
ing the foreigner’srice. Then there is the ques- 
tion of s/a/us, which seems to stand in the way 
of some in India and in other lands ; that is, 
the native workers feel that they are entitled to 
more power, liberty, and responsibility than 
they have; that they should receive larger 
recognition ; that more confidence should be 
shown in them by the missionaries. It is 
admitted that in some cases they have good 
reasons for this opinion. But in more cases, 
I am persuaded, their attitude is due to a 
misconception of the motives and spirit of 
the missionaries. Nevertheless, this is a 
very real difficulty, and it is not easy to 
overcome it. 

The opposition of parents and relatives is 
a very real hindrance. Far more than at 
home, in lands where the Confucian ethics 
dominate, or where the system of casée exists, 
it is exceedingly difficult for young men to 


7 


stand out against the expressed desire of par- 
ents, relatives, and friends. The attractions 
presented by commercial pursuits, by govern- 
ment service, and by other so-called secular 
walks of life, is a principal reason, if not the 
principal reason, why it is so difficult to-day 
to get a sufficient number of strong native 
students to devote themselves to Christian 
work. The sa/aries paid in the secular call- 
ings range all the way from a little larger to 
thirty or more times larger than can be paid 
in Christian service. It is just as though the 
students of Oberlin and other colleges were 
offered five-thousand-dollar salaries to enter 
business or certain political positions. If 
this were done, it would be exceedingly 
difficult to get a sufficient number of men 
for the work of the ministry. Might it not 
prove to be a severe temptation to young 
men even in our theological seminaries? 
When one of my friends visited the Doshisha 
Seminary a few years ago, he found there 
eighty theological students. When I touched, 
there the first time, five years ago, the num- 
ber had fallen to less than a score. I was 
told by the professors that the chief cause of 
this decline in the number of ministerial can- 
didates was the great inducements to money- 
making in connection with the recent com- 
mercial development of Japan. This is a real 
difficulty, and we should have sympathy with 
those subjected to such pressure, remember- 
8 


ing that they have not, like ourselves, Chris- 
tian heredity, Christian environment, and the 
dominance of Christian ideals to hold them 
to higher tasks. 

A lack of spirituality should not be omitted 
among the causes making it difficult to get a 
sufficient number of men for Christian work. 
In these non-Christian lands many young men 
have a hold upon Christianity, but, generally 
speaking, Christianity does not have a power- 
ful hold upon them. Wherever I found a 
native student upon whom the Spirit of God 
had laid his mighty hand, I found a student 
who was eager to enter upon the service of 
his fellow-men, and, therefore, willing to face 
the hardships, opposition, and sacrifice in- 
volved. 

If I may mention another reason why we 
are not raising up this army more rapidly and 
using it more extensively, I should say it is 
because of the Zack of adequate efforts and 
measures to secure and to use more workers. 
Those boards and missions which have given 
most thought to this problem are the boards 
and missions which have raised up the largest 
number of effective agents. Those mission- 
aries whom I have met in my travels, who 
have had the greatest burden upon them, 
that they might be used of God in enlisting 
young men and young women for this impor- 
tant service, are the missionaries who are 
turning the largest number of young men 

9 


and young women into Christian work as a 
life work. 


HOW MEET THE DIFFICULTIES? 
1. Thoroughgoing Study and Statesmanlike Policy 


What can be done to meet the difficulties 
to which attention has been called, and to 
raise up this army? In the first place there 
should be a comprehensive and thorough- 
going study of this question and a states- 
manlike policy with reference to meeting the 
need. It should be comprehensive, in the 
sense of taking into the scheme, as the Jesuits 
have done, the whole world. It should be 
comprehensive, in a second sense, that it 
embraces the generation for the serving of 
which God holds us responsible. Let the 
policy grapple with the whole generation, and 
not simply with emergencies. It should be 
a statesmanlike policy, in the sense that it 
takes account of all other forces in the Church 
of Christ at work on the mission field, thus 
avoiding duplicating or overlapping. We 
might wisely imitate the practice of the Euro- 
pean powers, with reference to their naval 
programs. They adopt a policy which re- 
quires years to fulfil; for example, they plan 
to lay down so many battleships this year, to 
build so many torpedo boats and destroyers 
next year, to equip a certain coaling station 
and build a dry dock a year later. So the 
Church should look down through the years, 


10 


and so lay her plans as to bring up the forces 
to meet the needs of the world of our own 
generation. 


2. Greatly Enlarge and Strengthen the Educa- 
tional Work 


A second thing which is exceedingly im- 
portant is that we greatly enlarge and 
strengthen the educational missionary work. 
I have had the privilege of visiting nearly all 
the colleges of the American Board, some of 
them twice. In addition to that, I have vis- 
ited scores, if not hundreds, of colleges and 
high schools of other boards of the North 
American and European societies. I would 
say here to-night what I have said concern- 
ing the American Board in the gathering of 
another denomination, that I know of no 
colleges which have had a larger fruitage in 
the respect of which we are speaking — that 
of furnishing the right kind of native agents 
—than the colleges of the American Board. 
It should be a distinct encouragement, and 
also an appeal that no one take our crown. I 
would add, also, a conviction that has not been 
formed hastily. There should be expended 
on these higher institutions of the American 
Board within the next five years not iess 
than one million dollars. I will not go into 
details explaining what this money should be 
used for,— adding plants here, endowment 
there, strengthening the teaching force here, 


It 


improving the equipment there. It seems 
like a reasonable proposition in a country 
like this, which has found it possible during 
the past year, in private gifts alone, to devote 
scores of millions of dollars to higher educa- 
tion. One bequest, announced the other day, 
for Princeton Theological Seminary, is likely 
to amount to a million and a half of dollars. 
The Protestant Episcopal Church has just 
issued an appeal for one million dollars, to 
endow their work in their most recently en- 
tered field, —the Philippines. I believe that 
men of large financial ability and large out- 
look will respond far more generously to a 
plan which seems adequate to do the work 
which God has assigned to our generation, 
than to one which is obviously insufficient to 
meet the need and opportunity. 


INCREASED FORCE OF WORKERS 


But I am even more convinced that we 
should add to the force of workers in these 
colleges than to their material equipment. 
This is the last part of the foreign service 
that we should allow to be undermanned. 
It is poor economy to put up these large 
institutional plants and underman them to 
the point that we fall short of making them 
productive investments. It has seemed to 
me that the staff of workers was often so 
overburdened with the technical work of 
teaching, which ought, for the honor of the 


12 


Church, to be kept up to scholarly standards, 
that they were not able to give the time that 
they desired to give to the most vital part, — 
the touching the lives of the students. We 
must add to the force of educational mis- 
sionaries. ‘They need not all necessarily be 
ordained men. Nowand then an unordained 
man who has been well prepared for teaching, 
and who is a religious force among students 
at home, would be very successful in such 
work abroad. 


QUALITY, NOT QUANTITY 


We must add to this force to such an ex- 
tent that in every mission college and school 
the educational missionary will have enough 
time to think, to grasp the problems, to 
pray, to do a lot of personal work, to 
deeply impress the students. I visited 
the college of Dr. Mateer in the Shan- 
tung Province some years ago. He and 
Mrs. Mateer started that Christian college 
about thirty years before the time of my 
visit. I learned that every graduate of that 
institution had become a Christian before 
graduation, and that the large majority of 
them had entered some form of Christian 
work as a life work. Later, I found one or 
more of these graduates on the teaching staff 
of nearly every important mission college of 
China. When I asked Dr. Mateer the secret 
of the wonderful influence of the college, he 

13 


replied: “ My wife and I early came to the 
conclusion that we together could not deeply 
impress more than sixty students. And so 
we deliberately kept down the number of 
students.” The yield that has followed 
would seem to prove the wisdom of their 
practice. 

We should never cease to mention with 
gratitude the name of Miss Eliza Agnew, who 
within forty years sent out from her school in 
Ceylon six hundred graduates as Christians, 
of whom over two hundred entered what we 
would call distinctively Christian callings. She 
never let the number in the school become so 
large that she could not give personal atten- 
tion to the individual student. 

In India I met a man who made a profound 
impression upon me. Later, I learned that 
not infrequently he spent long hours—on 
one occasion, the whole night —in interces- 
sion for the native workers. A friend of mine 
went out from Oxford to India and became 
absorbed in executive work. He wrote me 
three or four years ago: ‘‘I have decided to 
change my method ; I am going to spend a 
large section of my time this year with a little 
group of men.” The size of the group, I may 
say, was twelve. I heard from him toward 
the close of the year that the fires of God 
were burning in the lives of those men. He 
was walking in the footsteps of Jesus Christ 
in this practice. 


14 


MULTIPLICATION, NOT ADDITION 


The greatest work of the missionary is the 
making of missionaries. In no other way 
can he so multiply himself. What a work 
was accomplished by the men who influenced 
for Christ such natives as Moses Kya, of the 
Sandwich Islands; Tiyo Soga and Bishop 
Crowther, of Africa; the great Sheshadri; 
the converted Brahmin, Banurji, of Calcutta ; 
Chatterjea, of the Punjab, and Pundita Rama- 
bai, of Western India ; the Brothers Meng, in 
North China, and Pastor Shen, the worker of 
the London Missionary Society among the 
Chinese ; Miyagawa, of Osaka, and Honda 
and Uemura, of Tokio. Lives like these are 
not the product of foreign money and intel- 
lectual culture alone,— they are the gift of 
God through the example, the training, and 
the spiritual nurture of Christian missionaries. 


3, A Large Investment of Money 


In the third place, if we are to have this 
army of workers, there must be a wise use 
of a large amount of money in raising up and 
sustaining such a native agency. I realize 
keenly the difficulty of the problem. Like 
every other important thing, it is beset with 
difficulties. But the fact of a difficulty should 
be a challenge rather than a hindrance to us. 
I believe there is a way to use money (and 
this has been proved again and again in the 
missions of the American Board) which will 

15 


not hinder, but rather further, one of the great 
objects we have in view; namely, the stimu- 
lating and enlarging of self-support. It will 
not be easy. It will require the exercise of 
much patience and judgment, and call for 
much prayer. But there is no body of men in 
Christian work to-day who can be depended 
upon to make a wiser use of money for such 
a purpose than the men stationed in the key 
positions of the missionary societies of Great 
Britain and America. 


4, Co-operation of Forces 


Moreover, we should co-operate with the 
Christian Student Movement in the non-Chris- 
tian countries. The Young Men’s Christian 
Association Movement in the colleges of Asia 
and other non-Christian parts of the world is 
not a self-appointed task. It was planted in 
mission lands by the missionaries, and every 
one of the foreign secretaries engaged in de- 
veloping and extending the movement in the 
heathen world has gone there at the call of 
the missionaries. It is the policy of this 
movement never to send a secretary to a 
non-Christian country until all the mission- 
aries of all the responsible denominations at 
work in a given field unite in an appeal and 
take the initiative in asking for such a secre- 
tary. The thirty-one men now on the field 
have, without exception, gone in response to 
such calls. These men have already devel- 

16 


oped over one hundred and fifty college 
Christian associations. They are found not 
only in the Christian colleges, but also in 
many of the leading government institutions 
throughout Asia and in other parts of the 
world. ‘These organizations and the secre- 
taries are supervised by national committees, 
the principal members of which are mission- 
aries,— such men as Dr. Davis, on the Na- 
tional Committee of Japan, and Dr. Sheffield, 
on the National Committee of China. The 
object of this Christian movement is to help 
evangelize the students, and then lay upon 
them the burden for evangelizing their own 
people. Thus it is, in a true sense, a Stu- 
dent Volunteer Movement for Home Missions. 
And herein lies the reason why the mission- 
aries believe in this work so strongly wherever 
it has been well established and supervised. 


THE STUDENTS OF THE WORLD UNITED 


The methods employed by this movement 
are those which have been most fruitful in the 
colleges of the West. The devotional, thor- 
ough study of the Bible is much emphasized. 
Already, from one fourth to one half of the 
Christian students in the colleges with asso- 
ciations have been drawn into voluntary Bible 
classes. Among other methods promoted are 
personal work, evangelistic campaigns in the 
neighborhood, and the development of mis- 
sionary interest. Special stress is laid on 


17 


influencing strong students to devote their 
lives to Christian work as a life work. About 
five hundred students in China, India, Cey- 
lon, and the Levant have already become 
volunteers. Of this number, over one fourth 
volunteered during the past year. The means 
employed by the national committees to de- 
velop this movement are : Conferences for the 
deepening of the spiritual life and for training 
voluntary workers ; the preparation and use 
of literature designed to help in the forma- 
tion of right habits for the cultivation of the 
spiritual life, and to stimulate Christian effort ; 
the visits of expert secretaries, necessary even 
in a country like the United States, if the fires 
are to be kept burning and if the work is to 
be co-ordinated and brought into vital con- 
nection with similar movements of other 
countries. By means of the World’s Student 
Christian Federation the Christian student 
movements of non-Christian lands are or- 
ganically related to the Christian organiza- 
tions of students all over the world. Over 
eighty thousand Christian students and pro- 
fessors in forty different nations are bound 
together in this world-wide movement for 
the evangelization of the world and the com- 
plete establishment of Messiah’s Kingdom. I 
have just come from Denmark, where I met 
in conference the representatives of twenty- 
nine of these national student movements. 
There native Christian Japanese, Chinese, and 
18 


indian delegates sat with the leaders of the 
work in Christian lands and helped to shape 
the policy for the work of Christ among the 
students of the world. It was decided that 
the next conference of the World’s Student 
Christian Federation be held in Japan in 
1904 —the first world’s conference, either 
secular or religious, that has ever gone to 
Asia. What may it not mean to the great 
government student centers in Japan, and to 
missionary colleges and schools in Korea, 
Japan, and China? 


5. Productive Power of Prayer 


Above all, there is need of far more prayer 
for the raising up and the thrusting forth of 
the army of native workers. This means is 
necessary to make all the other means effect- 
ive. It is necessary to make them most 
largely productive. It is the means and the 
only means on which Christ has placed stress 
in connection with getting laborers. Any 
plan which neglects this factor is exceedingly 
superficial. Why leave unappropriated and 
unapplied the greatest force for the raising up 
and energizing of laborers and for calling in- 
to being and energizing spiritual movements? 


PROBLEM URGENT AND IMMEDIATE 
What we do to solve this great problem, 
and every other problem which has come 
before us during these days, we must do 


19 


quickly. Too many organizations and indi- 
vidual Christians to-day are acting and plan- 
ning as though they had two or three gen- 
erations to do the work for which God is 
going to hold them responsible. We need 
to revise our method in this respect and to 
focus our energies upon the task at hand. 
While it is true that we should build for the 
future generations and for eternity, the best 
way to do it is to serve our own generation 
by the will of God. The only way that this 
world is ever going to be evangelized is 
going to be by each generation of Christians 
resolving to evangelize its own generation oO! 
non-Christians. The Christian world to-day 
can evangelize the unevangelized now living ; 
the Christians of the last generation and the 
Christians who are to come after us cannot 
do it. I repeat it: We must evangelize 
our own generation of unevangelized if they 
are ever to know and obey Jesus Christ. 
There is an element of urgency and imme- 
diacy in the command of Jesus Christ that 
we are prone to overlook. The dominant im- 
pression made on me during my last tour 
around the world was that every mission 
field is ripe, yes, dead ripe, and that the time 
has come to reap. In my judgment, if we 
rise to our opportunity, the next ten years 
will witness an unprecedented ingathering 
into the kingdom of Christ in all the great 
mission fields. 


20 


